


Endurance (remix)

by homesickblues



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Implied Past Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 06:20:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10679481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homesickblues/pseuds/homesickblues
Summary: For Eames, grief presents itself in unusual ways and at... convenient times.





	Endurance (remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Persistence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9494582) by [Sibilant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sibilant/pseuds/Sibilant). 



> thanks to [austrechild](http://archiveofourown.org/users/austrechild/pseuds/austrechild) for being a wonderful beta! and thanks to sibilant for writing such an amazing original fic. 
> 
> ... also sorry in advance for the extended heartbreak.

 

It’s been a while since Eames has felt this completely and utterly fucked, and he’s inclined to believe that maybe this time will really take the cake. And it’s his own fault, really. Well – some of the blame can be angled toward that wanker Kozlov who lured him into this job with the promise of a triple figure payout and an extended vacation somewhere sunny upon its completion only to sell him out. Turns out a few of his Russian mates just so happened to have a pretty price on Eames’s head.

They were only one level down when it happened. It was supposed to just be a test run, and Kozlov told him he’d join him in the dream a few minutes late because he wanted to organize some files (this should have been his first clue, any point man worth his salt would already have all of his files organized before even stepping foot into a job). He knows they ambushed him in the dream as a weird sort of payback; an eye for an eye.

“You think you’re so tough, huh?” a stout man with a missing front tooth – whom Eames can only assume is Viktor Vakichev based on some cursory descriptions he’d heard being tossed around the more shadowy part of the business – says in a cartoonish Russian accent like an old Bond villain. He’s circling Eames like a shark who’s just sniffed out a tendril of blood, and the motion of it is making Eames’s stomach churn. “You think you can run behind all of our backs, militarize all the best marks, and come out unscathed? You think that’s how this works, _Подонок*_?”

Eames resists the urge to roll his eyes, because this is exactly why he can’t help but blame himself. It was a touch arrogant to think that he could militarize the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people on the side, and then slip by only taking jobs on un-militarized minds, without this all catching up to bite him right in the arse. This – _this_ is why Arthur’s absence sometimes feels like a gaping, cavernous black hole in his very existence. Arthur would have been much smarter about all of this. Arthur would have taken the extra precaution to smudge their footprints out of the snow, as it were.

But Arthur’s gone, so Eames has to try and figure out how to weasel his way out of this solo.

“I think you’ve got the wrong man,” Eames says flippantly, slouching back as much as he can given that his hands are tied behind his back. “I haven’t the slightest what you’re talking about.”

“Oh _please_ ,” Vakichev hisses, throwing an amused look to the other side of the dark room where Eames catches a glimpse of the several hulking figures waiting in the shadows. “You were sloppy. You left loose ends all over the place. The rest of your team… they were easy enough to track, and easy enough to make talk, and what do you know? All those loose ends lead right back to _you_ , Mr. Eames. Besides--” Vakichev rests heavily against the back of the chair Eames is currently tied to and leans down so his sour breath is right in Eames’s ear. “Don’t think I didn’t recognize the projection you put in charge. Don’t think that I didn’t hear about what happened last year to your little _friend_ … Served him right, if you ask me. That’s what you get for being a nosy, pestilent little prick.”

 

 

***

 

 

“Can you _imagine_ ,” Arthur says with that ridiculous half-pout-half-smirk thing that only he can do, draped sideways in a beige hotel chair with his shirt sleeves rolled up, looking like he’s all at once on the cover of Vogue Italy and an Arctic Monkeys album. Eames tries not to stare like he’s gawking at a Michelangelo, so instead he moves to walk over to the minibar and scrounge them up a drink with whatever tiny bottles of liquor with a ridiculous price tag he can find. When he turns back, drinks in hand, he finds Arthur’s head thrown back in silent laughter, a hand covering his mouth. He’s already a little bit tipsy from their indulgent night out in Stockholm, but Eames realizes with astonishment that it’s one of those rare moments that Arthur drops all his pretenses and is just so purely _Arthur_ that he has to remind himself to savor it. A fact about Arthur that Eames loves is that he exudes an ‘I’ll drink you under the table, motherfucker’ attitude while, in truth, he’s an embarrassing lightweight. Eames is positive it’s because he doesn’t have an ounce of fat on his body.

He peels his eyes away from the smooth line of Arthur’s exposed throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, to set Arthur’s drink on the coffee table and sprawl out on the couch opposite him.

“What’s so funny, then?” Eames asks, even though he already knows.

Arthur catches his breath and runs a thumb under his watering left eye. “I’m just imagining the faces of so many asshole extractors we’ve dealt with… Iwate, Kasmiroff, Garcia, Bouchareb… when they’re two levels down in a dream, seconds away from the mark, and _we_ bust down the door and fuck them up.”

Eames can’t help but smile fondly. “It’d be like the ghosts of dreamshare past.”

“It’s only fitting.” Arthur sits up and snatches his whiskey off the table, smiling around the rim as he takes a hearty sip. “It’s exactly the type of legacy I want to leave in all of this.”

Eames smiles indulgently, even though the notion of a legacy is obscene to him, because Arthur is _Arthur_. Arthur’s both the unstoppable force _and_ the immovable object. Arthur’s in his prime, and as far as Eames is concerned, he’s immortal. A raging fire that can’t be doused.

 

 

***

 

 

“Eames, that’s… that’s a hell of a lot of effort for a private joke.”

Eames is actually a bit stunned every time he sees his projection of Arthur. It’s stunningly similar to the real thing – and maybe that’s because following the three lost days after having to identify Arthur in a body bag, he spent an entire day in a dark room trying to put every single inch of Arthur to memory, like copying data onto a hard drive.

The projection standing in front of him is Arthur even in _essence_. Eames had to make sure that the projection’s aura was correct. It has to _exude_ Arthur, or else there’s really no point. Arthur can’t be an empty shell. Arthur has to be Arthur. And maybe that’s a selfish necessity, but he doesn’t exactly give a rat’s arse.

“It started as a joke.” Eames smiles then, because memories of that night in Stockholm come rushing into his mind. “And then became an experiment. And now…”

The projection steps forward and twines his fingers with Eames’s, and Eames feels something inside of him clench tightly. His eyes sting a bit as he looks down at the familiar sight of their joined hands, remembering how this was something Arthur only did in the quiet moments when it was just the two of them. To an outsider, it might seem like a rather un-Arthur action, but Eames has a mind full of clung-to memories to prove them wrong. Arthur was soft, and gentle, and private. Arthur loved quietly but furiously, like a hurricane in a vacuum.

“Now?” the projection asks, looking into Eames’s eyes with a quirked brow and a single dimple appearing on one cheek. Eames wants to reach up and plant his thumb there, but he resists the urge, because no, this isn’t actually Arthur, as much as he wants to let himself believe it. He can’t fall into the same rabbit hole that almost consumed Dom Cobb. A firm line must always separate dream from reality if he’s to keep a firm grasp on things; if he’s to complete what he’s set out to do. He’ll never touch Arthur’s dimples again, and that has to be his reality.

Which is why he’s created this projection for the sole purpose of militarization. This projection can’t exist in his own subconscious, and he’s consistently refused to work on him in his own dream. They were testing the military response in one of Eames’s teammates minds, who’s off in some other part of the massive maze of a building they’re in, allowing his mind to attack the rest of them for trying to steal his secrets.

“Now,” Eames replies, pushing down the rawness threatening to rise up from his chest, “it’s an odd, ridiculous memorial for an odd, ridiculous man.”

 

 

***

 

 

Eames suddenly struggles violently at Vakichev’s binds as if he’s been reanimated, snarling with bared teeth. “Don’t--” He realizes how pointless it is to defend a dead man’s honor, but he doesn’t really care. He wants to scream _‘get your hands off of him_ ’, but there’s nothing for Vakichev to put his hands _on_. Eames feels the same urgency to protect Arthur’s memory like he couldn’t protect Arthur’s body… his _life_. “Don't you _dare_ even mention him, you disgusting, slimy-”

Vakichev smirks. “Thank you for proving my original point. In any case, you'll be joining him soon.”

Eames waits for the terror to enclose around him, for the panic to rise in his chest, but it doesn’t come. He’s wary. He’s _tired_. The tiredness before felt like something ever-present, but never really potent enough to throw him off-course. But now the tiredness feels like it’s seeping into his bone marrow. His cockiness has worn off, so instead he just leans back and stares defiantly up at Vakichev, who smirks, conjuring up a nasty looking knife and stroking the blunt side against Eames’s cheek. Eames knows his plan, then. Torture him in the dream, wake him up, kill him in reality. It’s all too easy.

“Ready for a close shave, then?” Vakichev says, raising his voice a bit for the benefit of his goons over in the shadows, who snicker and begin to make their way forward to join in on the fun.

Eames is about ready to turn himself off; to attempt to dissociate entirely from his body for the duration of this experience, when he sees a fast movement out of the corner of his eye, barely a flicker, before one of the goons makes a horrible croaking noise and collapses to the ground, blood spewing from a smooth gash across his neck. The rest of them turn and raise whatever weapons they’ve got when Eames hears the distinct and very familiar metallic _whooshing_ noise of a glock with a silencer screwed onto the end.

He cranes his neck to see the source, and hears Vakichev bellow the beginning of a flowery curse in Russian before the glock sounds again. Vakichev drops onto the dusty floor behind Eames with a dull but echoing thud, while Eames furiously tries to calculate how one of his projections could have broken into the heavily secured compound that Vakichev had planned specifically to keep them out. But non-militarized projections are usually too clumsy with firearms to pull off the impressive display he just witnessed, leading Eames to the conclusion that this can’t just be any run-of-the-mill projection.

“What mess have you gotten yourself into this time?”

Arthur’s all tailored lines and sharp edges in one of his signature suits, his hair perfectly slicked and his shoulders squared as they always are when he means business. Eames pauses, waits a beat, before opening his mouth to speak only to find that no air can squeeze its way out of his esophagus. His brain malfunctions because Arthur is _there_. As if he’s some sort of a damsel in a Victor Hugo novel, Arthur’s come to save him.

Arthur moves quickly, undoing his bonds and helping him out of the chair.

“You’re-” Eames stutters, reaching up to grip at Arthur’s shoulder with one hand and touch his face with the other once his arms are free. He’s disoriented still, trying to center his consciousness after having to dissociate from himself so quickly to prepare for torture. Arthur’s face feels warm, and smooth, and…

When Arthur flashes him a brief smile in response, there’s a sadness behind it, and Eames is forced to face a truth he _knows_ but isn’t quite ready to accept. Again.

“You’re not real,” Eames states, recoiling his hand from Arthur’s face like it’s been burnt, feeling all at once like a fool and like he’s been viciously robbed of the one thing he truly wants. He notices the details, then. The way some parts of the Arthur standing in front of him are a bit blurry; forgotten… unsure.

Arthur sighs longsufferingly and reaches up to place his palm against Eames’s chest.

“Unfortunately not.”

“But how?” Eames presses, regardless of the fact that he’s talking to a _bloody_ projection. “I made a distinct effort to keep any projection of you out of my own mind. I just placed you in the minds of others. I didn’t… I never intended to make you into a shade.”

The projection of Arthur seems to consider, looking up at the grimy rafters straddling the ceiling. “You militarized yourself, maybe?”

“I took every precaution…” Eames shakes his head, staring down at Arthur’s slightly scuffed loafers (the same loafers Arthur’s corpse was wearing the last time Eames saw him) and tries to think of why this is happening to him. How he spent so long making sure he didn’t have another Mallorie Cobb situation on his hands… and now here Arthur is, standing in front of him, perfect but fake. A lie. A _fiction_. The tears sting at his eyes and he clenches his fists, wrestling them back.

Arthur smiles then, reaching up to graze his fingers along the underside of Eames’s jaw, looking nonplussed and curious. “You’ve been working so hard on creating a memorial to me… making me the bogeyman that haunts dreamshare until its last gasping breath... I know it was an inside joke, but I think it’s deeper than that, isn’t it? You’re trying to avenge me.”

Eames shrugs one shoulder, clenching his jaw so tightly that his head is starting to ache.

“They took you from me,” he croaks, eyes swimming.

Arthur places one finger under his chin and pushes his head up so Eames is forced to look at the specter of what he’s lost. The projection smiles wistfully. “Maybe I imprinted into your mind while I was still alive that I’d always have your back… purposefully or not. Kind of like inception, but not nefarious. Maybe this is my _real_ legacy. The one that counts.”

Eames isn’t sure if the sensation in his chest is the tattered pieces of his heart still beating, or if it’s breaking all over again.

“I can’t do this, darling. I can’t keep seeing you down here.” Eames indulges himself, knowing he’ll likely receive a kick any moment now that will wrench him back into the grim reality above, reaching up to run his fingers over Arthur’s face, seeking out all the lines and scars that come back into sharp focus as soon as he focuses in on them. Remembering every inch of Arthur is like remembering the lyrics to a favorite song he hasn’t heard in a while, or the last line of his favorite book. Something warm and familiar tugs at his chest behind something melancholy and broken.

“Then don’t get yourself into danger again,” Arthur teases, dimpling.

Eames huffs an emotional bark of laughter. “M’fraid that’s a bit difficult at the moment, considering Vakichev and his cronies are all waiting up there in _reality_ for me. They’ll be disappointed they won’t get to torture me quite as creatively as they would have in the dream, but I’m sure they’ll make do.”

“I can’t help you there,” Arthur admits with a sigh. “But I do know one thing: You’ll make it out of there alive. Because you’ve got to do so much living for the both of us, and dying now is unacceptable.”

Eames squints wryly at Arthur’s optimism, but can’t stop himself from smiling.

“Only for you, darling.” It’s a promise he isn’t sure he can keep, but he’s willing to die trying.

He leans forward to rest his forehead against Arthur’s and close his eyes, starting to feel that vertigo sensation of someone ripping the Somnacin line out of his wrist.

“Goodbye, Arthur,” he says quietly, because he didn’t get to say it when it mattered.

And then he’s falling, and then he’s waking up, and then he’s lunging, fists clenched, ready to fight for the life he has to live for himself, and for the memory of another. 

**Author's Note:**

> * _Bastard_


End file.
